When candidates at the first mayoral debate this week called Rob Ford’s “I saved taxpayers a billion dollars” claim a figment of his imagination, he countered that they must then be calling the city manager and chief financial officer liars.

So, on Thursday, the bureaucrats spoke. And they seemed to back up the mayor, but it is complicated.

City manager Joe Pennachetti said over the last term of council there has been $972-million of “quote budget reductions, budget savings.” A chart released by CFO Rob Rossini showed that the bulk of savings — $753-million — came in the form of “cost reductions” and “efficiencies.” Another $45-million in savings came from contracting out garbage, $138-million in savings from changes to the collective agreement, and $6.4-million from cuts to political office budgets.

“They are not a billion dollar of tax savings, they’re budget savings,” Mr. Pennachetti told reporters Thursday, adding it does not mean the city government spent $972-million less over the last four years. “Budget savings include revenues and they include expenditures. That’s why we have to use specific language. If the mayor said it was a billion dollars of expenditure cuts, it’s incorrect. But it is a combination of expenditure cuts and revenues.”

Pressed to clarify further, he said finally: “He can say that I saved a billion dollars, I had budget savings over the four years.”

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Back in November, Mr. Pennachetti told reporters that at least half of the “efficiencies” were “true cost savings” and that the rest might be composed of other spending reductions. He conceded it didn’t make sense to include the $200-million from cancelling the vehicle registration tax — which the mayor had originally lumped into his $1-billion — as a budget savings because it was money the government ceased to collect.

The latest note from city finance staff shows that savings amount to $972-million without the vehicle registration tax. But the list does include $32-million in savings from the police budget, even though the police budget increased this term. The savings shown is the difference between what the police asked as a budget increase, and what they actually got. The savings figure also includes $30-million raised by hiking user fees and $36-million saved on lower interest rates for debt payments.

Mr. Pennachetti said previous terms of councils have also had hundreds of millions of dollars in “budget savings” but did not have a precise figure. He stressed that for him, the true accomplishment of the Ford term is eliminating the reliance on surplus dollars to balance the budget, to the tune of $350-million.

“That’s what this last term of council did achieve. I would stand behind that. The $350-million to me is the key number,” he said.

Councillor Gord Perks was fuming. He accused the CFO of inserting himself into the mayoral race and was “flabbergasted” that the city manager didn’t dispute the mayor’s claims.

“The city manager is plain wrong. Taxpayers did not find a billion dollar savings over the last four years,” he said.

Mr. Perks said much of the difference is actually a refinement in previous year estimates. When the TTC ends up with more revenue than it projected, “that’s not a budget savings. It’s not a cut. It’s not anything. It was a wrong guess.”